Bournagain

Follow this link for a very interesting article giving a New Zealand appraisal of the current situation in France. It’s a bit thin as a reflection of the diversity of French society, and gives the impression that everyone is middle class with a good amount of disposable income. There are several “Frances”, and many French do not fit the journalist’s description. However, I think that on the whole the picture she paints of the coming crisis is prophetic.

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Over a week without a post! One of the things I love about Christmas is spending a few days just being together as a family without the usual time pressures. We did our family celebration on the 24th, and had a really fun day just doing nothing much other than playing with the new toys, eating, talking with family on the phone, and ending the day in front of the Narnia DVD. As we sat down to dinner Laura said that it was the kind of day that she wishes would never end. I guess it’s a little taste of heaven really. The idyll is still punctuated by the odd family squabble, the Christmas dessert that doesn’t look anything like the picture in the recipe book and that the kids don’t like anyway, the bits missing from the new lego set… life goes on. But it’s great having those little flashes of perfection to keep us moving “further up and further in”.

On the 25th we braved the icy fog and drove an hour south to our English friends the Johnsons where we enjoyed several hours around their overflowing table with some interesting new people, including the pastor of the Reformed church in La Roche sur Yon.

It was a big today today in the life of the St. Sébastien church – the annual Christmas festival. A number of churches we know take advantage of the fact that Christmas is one of the only times of the year that people give Jesus a second thought, and plan an event for inviting friends and neighbours.

What made it unusual for us that it will be our last. In the past we have always been involved at every level, but this time we were pretty much able to sit back and watch it all happen – well, I put together a choir at the last minute for one song, which probably sounds like a big deal, but it all came together without much input from me. The children were all involved of course, and really seemed to enjoy themselves.

It feels so weird knowing that we’re moving on – a bit like the elves leaving Middle Earth We feel like flies on the wall, just watching it all happen. There were several visitors there today, a number of new families who have been coming regularly for a while – don’t think we have ever had so many children for a special day like this before. The young people completely took care of getting the meal organised and serving it all (for “meal” read four-course, three-hour long extravaganza – in France when we eat together, we don’t do things by halves!) It was great seeing different ones put their gifts to good use.

My emotions are torn between being relieved and excited to be moving on to something new, and feeling rather sad that we’re going to miss out on an exciting new phase in the life of the church: I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.

Maria with friends Louise and Camille, and her Mum Sarah.

Bed time ditty:

It’s ten to eight,
It’s terribly late!
It’s time to go to sleep!
Now up you go,
And don’t say no,
Just count the sheep!

Accident on my toy truck:

Vroom! Vroom!
Goes my tractor down the alleys of the court yard,
“There is no room! There is no room!”
Shouts mother from next door’s yard,
Bump, bump, goes my tractor in the stones,
So I tumble over and moan,
Stomp, stomp, mother’s footsteps come near with a gasp,
“I told you there was no room! You went to fast!”

Laura: I love writing poems for children a bit younger than me. Especially because I have time to myself with home schooling and I love imagining things.

Welcome to our blog for those who have just linked in from our newsletter which went out today. Hope you enjoy your visit.

We just had our new neighbours over for “goûter” – it’s the same kind of idea as afternoon tea, and it’s a pretty common way of inviting people for the first time, especially if they have children. They’ve moved into the house next door which had been empty for 30 years! Good thing they have time off work to get some work done on it. They have two children, including a boy a bit older than Isaac, and they seem to get on well.

Like so many people we have met in Nantes, they have fled the rat race of Paris for a change of lifestyle out in the provinces. What a life they had – 3 hours in the car each day, on top of an up-to-10 hour day. Interesting jobs, well paid, but at the cost of seeing their son for about half an hour a day for the first six years of his life. They have very bravely taken the plunge into a change of geography, in the hope that it will lead to a change of lifestyle.

It made us think of our major change of geography 7 years ago when we came here. And we have changed, but in hindsight it was nothing to do with geography. Just changing the externals of life doesn’t necessarily change who we are inside. I can move wherever I like in the world, but my priorities, my patterns of relating, my blind spots, they way I define myself, all come with me. Real change is “from the inside out”, and often involves the painful giving up of things in my life which take the place of God.

Nice family – hope we can get to know them better. We miss our friends from across the road who have moved to Bordeaux – another example of someone desperately seeking change but not really knowing where to look for it. We are still in touch – had a visit from them during the November school holidays.

Sunday afternoons are always looked forward to in our family, as Sunday mornings are usually pretty intense. Heather has been doing a survey of the Middle Ages with the children, and since there is no shortage of castles around here we went to visit one this afternoon for a bit of a family outing. On a bleak winter’s day with not too many tourists around it would be a pretty spooky place. Built in the 12th century, it’s most famous occupant was Gilles de Rais, alias “Bluebeard”, friend of Joan of Arc, who had a successful career as Marshal of France, defending the land from those nasty English. Sadly his life ended in wierdness, with forays into the occult, alchemy and crime.

It was pretty hard to spot the ghosts this afternoon though. This month they have turned the place into a large Christmas market, with overpriced trinkets, candy floss, roast chestnuts and mulled wine – the usual Christmas market stuff. There were SO many people. Christmas is so bizarre isn’t it? I think it’s struck me more this year than ever before. What a huge amount of time, money and effort goes into preparing to celebrate, when nobody really knows what we’re celebrating. Not that there’s anything wrong with having a party from time to time, but it’s getting so over the top. In spite of all the hype it is one of the loneliest times of the year for a lot of people, the most stressful times, and the month where people are most likely to get into financial difficulty – all for the sake of something that is supposed to make us happy.

The need to celebrate is basic to humanity, and it is such a crushing realisation for many people that there really isn’t that much to celebrate. There is a reason though, that is so much deeper and wider and more interesting than just Christmas – it’s the mystery of Emmanuel, God with us – and not just on December 25th but 365 days a year. God WITH us – not some distant philosophy or outmoded morality, but the real thing!

Let’s celebrate this every day, December 25th included!

Esther is coming over to babysit tonight so we can go out for our birthday treat. Esther is from Germany, from a little village right on the Polish border, and she has been working with us since September. There have been years when we have had up to 12 interns working with us in various OM projects, so it’s quite different having just one. She has been quite busy helping out with various activities: Flambeaux (Christian scouts), youth groups, Agapé – a Christian student association, not to mention being a great help in the office. Her French has come on in leaps and bounds, partly thanks to the family she’s living with.

Leslie from the US will be joining her in January, and there is also a new couple on the way once they get their visas. We’re looking forward to having an international “team” again, and the search for accomodation and sorting out their programme for next year is high on the priority list at the moment.

The children think it’s great having someone to help them with their German! It’s Maria’s favourite subject, and at the moment we have little pieces of paper stuck up all over the house with words and phrases that Laura is trying to learn.

Fridays bring a bit of a change in our daily routine, as Heather has started some volunteer work, which means Dad gets to spend a morning teaching the children (we’re home-educating for anyone who didn’t know).

For ages Heather had noticed how many “SDF”s we have in our community (“SDF” is an acronym for “no fixed abode” in French), but we’d always struggled to find a practical way of getting involved with these people. That is, until we discovered the Maison bleue – “the Blue House”. We’ve found churches here to be fairly unengaged when it comes to working with the down and outs. It’s partly to do with the Church and State thing – since 1905 the institutional Church has been pushed to the periphery of social action as the State has taken more responsibility. It has got more and more complicated for religious organisations to be involved in this kind of thing, and I guess Christians have just put it in the too hard basket.

But there are a surprising number of secular people with a social conscience who are out there trying to make a difference, and we met some of them this last August at a Forum for clubs and associations in our town of Rezé. Heather has started volunteering there with a friend, Sarah, every Friday morning. The Maison bleue is like a little haven for homeless and street people, or people who have simply fallen on hard times. It’s open every morning. Breakfast is served, there are places to sit and chat, play cards, take a shower, and a group of volunteers who are there just to serve and offer a listening ear.

“We mustn’t ever expect these people to change” is something Heather has heard more than once from the other workers. Sure, the “clients” are angry, they are unwashed, they are lacking even the most basic social graces. Some of them even get quite violent: the Maison was closed for a week a while back after the violent outbursts of one of the patrons. But the goal is not to change these people, but just to be there for them.

How often do we see needs in our communities, but feel paralysed into inaction because it just seems too difficult to do anything about it? This paralysis blinds us to the fact that there are things already going on. We don’t necessarily need to be the people who start these projects; sure, if we aren’t the initiators then we can’t put a nice plaque on the door to show that the project is owned and run by this or that church or ministry. But are people really interested in what we do on Sunday mornings?

In a world without God, “we can’t expect change” is a very tragic, but very inevitable statement. But what happens when Holy Spirit-filled, Kingdom-oriented, Jesus-loving people step out of their religious buildings and come into places where real life is happening, where people are struggling with the hard realities of existence, longing for change, but seeing only impossibility?

Disciples know that change is possible, because they’ve seen it in their own lives.

It’s early days yet, but we’re very interested to see what might develop here.

This is my first foray into the world of blogging. I’ve just turned 37, my children are probably more Internet-savvy than I am, and thought it was about time I entered the 21st century! Besides, I have to find a more efficient way of regularly communicating with far-flung friends and family.